WINNING! – Page 63

A first

Posted on April 25, 2020April 27, 2020 by Mike

Namely, the first time I’ve ever endorsed Microsoft’s view on just about anything.

Microsoft has settled the great space debate, and sided with everyone who believes one space after a period is correct, not two. The software giant has started to update Microsoft Word to highlight two spaces after a period (a full stop for you Brits) as an error, and to offer a correction to one space. Microsoft recently started testing this change with the desktop version of Word, offering suggestions through the Editor capabilities of the app.

Much of the debate around one space or two has been fueled by the halcyon days of the typewriter. Typewriters used monospaced fonts to allocate the same amount of horizontal spacing to every character. Narrow characters like “i” got the same amount of space as “m,” so the extra space after the “.” was needed to make it more apparent that sentences had ended. Word and many other similar apps make fonts proportional, so two spaces is no longer necessary.

That hasn’t stopped the battle over one space or two from raging on for decades, however. A study on the hotly contested issue supposedly handed the victory to the two-spacers back in 2018, but many questioned the research and it clearly wasn’t enough to convince Microsoft. Expect to see the new changes in Word roll out to everyone in the coming months. Congratulations, fellow one-spacers.

The biggest problem I have with double-spacing is that the people who actually use it are wildly inconsistent. There are a handful of sites I regularly troll for blog-fodder (American Thinker comes to mind) whose articles are double-spaced…mostly. But in just about every double-spaced article you find out there, it’s a stylistic guideline honored more in the breach. Which means I either have to leave the thing as it stands—inconsistent and sloppy-looking, which irks the living hell out of me—or eyeball the excerpt closely and correct all that irritating laxity myself.

Which of course I do. Of course, I also occasionally (okay, frequently) miss something myself, sometimes spotting it later when I go back to check the post again. In such cases, I usually have no qualm whatsoever about making the correction, which is a felony-level infraction of the long-standing blogger protocol which dictates that publishing a post is analagous to engraving it into a stone tablet. Of course, I give not a single damn about that; spelling or grammatical errors, typos, even muddled phrasing are all subject to adjustment if and when I catch ’em. I make no apologies for that. My blog, my rules, dammit.

The third-party posting software I use has a setting that auto-saves and auto-publishes periodically, which I didn’t even know about until relatively recently. This meant that posts would be uploaded and published on the site prematurely, before I had even finished writing them. Throw in my habit of starting a post, getting partway through it and leaving the window open as a reminder to finish the thing eventually—you would not even BELIEVE the number of incomplete and now-abandoned posts I have still sitting in my posting app—and then coming back to it hours or even days later, and it adds up to a serious potential for confusion and disaster.

Trivial matters all, to be sure. But maybe Microsoft’s decision to walk away from the archaic double-space standard will lighten my burden at least somewhat.

Hope and despair

Posted on April 25, 2020April 27, 2020 by Mike

A little tough love.

Listen. You were always going to suffer and die. Everyone in your family was always going to suffer and die. Everyone you know was always going to suffer and die. All your earthly efforts were going to come to nought, your country and culture — and, least we forget, “the economy” — were going to degenerate and disappear, and the sun was going to expand into a red giant and consume the earth as though it had never existed. All that was always going to happen, and you knew it all along, or would have if you had been paying attention.

If you are in despair now but weren’t before, you’re an idiot. You do realize this game you signed up for is called mortal life, right? Did someone not explain that to you? Were you expecting something different? I don’t know anything about your situation, but I know it hasn’t fundamentally changed. You were born on death row. Don’t you think that should have made you a little tougher than this?

As for the all the dupes and caitiffs and hypocrites and quislings you suddenly find yourself surrounded by — I hate to break it to you, but they were already like that. All you’re seeing now is what their true colors were all along. That’s what the word apocalypse actually means, you know: Revelation. Revealing. Uncovering. The green field coming off like a lid. For just a second, you get a glimpse of all the men behind all the curtains in the world. The whited sepulchers may have looked nicer before they were opened, but they were full of dead men’s bones all along.

You should have come to terms with death and suffering and evil a hell of a long time ago, but if you somehow haven’t gotten around to it yet, well, now’s your chance to do so. (Or not. Distraction is always an option, of course. I hear porn sites are offering premium memberships for free.)

Shall I close by saying that God loves you and everything’s going to be all right? Fine. God loves you, and everything’s going to be all right. Just keep in mind that God has loved everyone who has ever lived on this earth, and that “everything being all right,” by God’s standards, is evidently consistent with every imaginable human tragedy. Go read Candide sometime. Or the Book of Job. Or any history book, really. God’s love offers no assurance at all against the kinds of things you’re probably scared of. In the end, I’m afraid there’s just no substitute for learning not to be scared of them. And there are only two ways of doing that.

Good stuff; read it all.

I’ve long been amused, since way before the recent farcical hysteria, by news reports or those scolding seat-belt commercials making specious claims about “lives saved” or “deaths prevented.” Sorry, no. In all of human history, there has never been a single death “prevented,” nor a single life “saved.” There have been deaths averted, lives spared, yes. But that’s a strictly temporary reprieve, a postponing of the inevitable fate that faces us all.

In the long run, there ain’t no long run. It turns out that life really is nasty, brutish, and short after all. Deal with it.

Now let’s get to the hope, by which I mean tonight’s Feel Good Story Of The Week.

A Florida kennel at an animal shelter is empty for the first time in history since all of its dogs were adopted.

Volunteers at the Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control cheered in front of empty dog cages in celebration.

According to the organization, the kennel is just one out of three at the facility, which usually houses strays and overflows from the adoption kennel. It is also the first one to have been emptied completely.

Happy tidings indeed. If that story don’t make you feel a little bit better about things,then I’m afraid I just can’t help you.

(Via WRSA and Larwyn)

Stand update! A small victory.

HOUSTON, Texas — Harris County law enforcement officials backed down as the owner of the Federal American Grill decided to re-open his restaurant on the city’s west side despite orders directing restaurants to be closed except for curbside orders. Multiple law enforcement agencies in Houston said they were not responsible for enforcing the ordinance.

“We’ve complied 100 percent until now,” Brice told the Houston Chronicle. “What I don’t like is that the government is picking and choosing which businesses win or lose. They are sinking the economy. We have to stand our ground and get people back to work.”

After he announced the re-opening of his restaurant for dining-in, customers flocked to his side. Brice said he is only seating up to 30 percent of his capacity in order to maintain social distancing.

Sounds sensible enough to me. Good on Houston LEOs too, for upholding their oaths and ignoring unlawful orders. TL Davis, while somber and realistic, remains guardedly optimistic:

This is communism in the 21st Century. This is what we have allowed to take over capitalism and individual freedom. Part of that is something Ted Nugent spoke about on Glenn Beck. Hunters, people who enjoy traipsing through the countryside to down, butcher and eat their food from nature, vote in the single digits, i.e., less than 10%. While I am no big fan of the vote at this point, where there is no actual representation due to the dilution of the Permanent Reapportionment Act of 1929 that froze congressional representatives at 435, it’s the only current defense against communism short of civil unrest. If hunters voted at 90%, as they should be by now, it would change the entire dynamics of every rural state in the Union and maybe some of those on the fringes of it.

While I believe we have suffered from the ongoing communist agenda promoted since Woodrow Wilson, there are ways to counter and perhaps eradicate it from American life, but a few people would have to recognize this pandemic for the blessings it offers and spend a lot more time trying to point out those blessings.

He goes on to list and analyze some of them, winding up thusly:

While we now have the tools to rectify a lot of damage done over the years, there is no assurance that these points will be made. They certainly won’t be made by the current media. Our stated goal at 12 Round Enterprises is to expose these actions even prior to the pandemic. We can take it back, we can change America forever. Or, we can lose again, only this time, it’s for all the marbles.

That’s about the size of it, yeah. After long decades of passively watching as our liberty was incrementally taken from us, we suddenly find ourselves confronting a true now-or-never, do-or-die moment. Choose wisely and hope’s flame will continue to flicker, until the next challenge confronts us. Choose poorly and the final darkness will envelop us, once and for all.

Freedom fighter update! Comrade Sundance gives us the straight izvestia.

A review of controlled social media shows various acts of civilian rebellion are being met with police arrests, detention and incarceration.

Some states have released inmates to make room to jail rebellious soccer moms and subversive members of churches who are non compliant with the dictates of their local command and control authority.

According to the national Lügenpresse proximity alerts have been sounding in/around west coast beaches as well as multiple parks in the northeastern unified control zones. As a result, additional enforcement personnel have been dispatched to these hot spots to avoid any outbreak of spontaneous liberty.

Compliance, while increasingly tenuous, is being maintained.

Simultaneous to the targeting of the rebels, armed behavior modification coaches (local police) have taken positions around Blue state public parks and beaches to identify, separate and arrest targeted provocateurs and subversives attempting to express liberty against the interests of the COVID-19 ministry.

He has pictures from the front lines too, including this:

27-Year-Old San Diego Woman Faces 90 Days in Prison for Organizing Anti-Lockdown Protest https://t.co/5oWFMC4CsK via @gatewaypundit

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) April 25, 2020

Disgusting, abominable, intolerable, and as un-American as it’s possible to imagine. The mind reels. I’ve read dystopian sci-fi and PAW fiction that was easier to swallow than this is.

Bait and switch

Posted on April 25, 2020April 27, 2020 by Mike

Uncle Gropey might be about to join Albert “Arnold The Pig” AlGore, Bolshevik Bernie, and HILLARY!™ in the official ranks of Those Who Will Never Be President.

While the mainstream media has mostly kept a lid on this story, the sexual assault allegations by Tara Reade against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden aren’t going away soon. As PJM’s Rick Moran reported earlier this week, the D.C. police are treating the allegations as an “active and ongoing” investigation. Many liberals are turning a blind eye to the story, but there are some who have a vested interest in keeping this story alive and front and center: Bernie Bros.

In fact, Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders’ former campaign press secretary, who has been a vocal critic of Biden, suggested in an interview with The Atlantic that the allegations might just thwart Biden’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention.

Gray told Emma Green that the Democratic primary is far from over. “The Democratic Party would like us to believe [we’re now in the general election season], and they behaved that way even before Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race. But we are, in fact, still in a Democratic-primary season. Biden is only the presumptive nominee,” she said, before adding, “And there’s all kinds of whispers and rumors about whether or not something might happen at the convention, which might mean Joe Biden isn’t even the nominee.”

Try as Enemedia might to insert their fingers into their ears and loudly sing tra-la-la I can’t heeaaar you until it all goes away, Reade’s accusation is entirely credible, with far more evidence to support it than was ever the case back when the self-same rectal polyps were defaming poor Brett Kavanaugh.

OF COURSE Gropey did it; a leap of faith as gargantuan as Evel Knievel’s ill-fated Snake River Canyon fiasco would be required to believe otherwise, given his long history of sniffing, nuzzling, feeling up, and just generally forcing his unwanted attentions on every appalled female within his reach, whatever the victim’s age. How much that really matters to high-level Democrat-Socialist Party conspirators is another thing entirely.

Gray suggests that Democrat voters were conned into believing that Joe Biden was the most electable candidate while Reade’s allegations were ignored for over a year. A new report from The Intercept published on Friday says that new evidence supports the credibility of Tara Reade’s allegations against Biden.

I think it’s clear, based on Gray’s comments in her interview, that Bernie Bros who are not happy about Biden being the presumptive nominee are going to make sure the Tara Reade allegations don’t get swept under the rug, in the hopes that they can pull off getting a different candidate on the ballot. While this is highly unlikely, in my opinion, I’m inclined to believe that there are enough Bernie Sanders supporters who will do anything they can to thwart Biden’s nomination. Even without the Tara Reade allegations, there’s enough for Democrats to be concerned about. Biden has an enthusiasm gap that is likely not going to change, and his cognitive decline will likely become a huge liability in the fall.

Throw in Uncle Gropey’s rapidly-escalating cognitive dysfunction and there ain’t gonna be enough popcorn in the world for this shitshow.

Two ways of being an American?

Posted on April 24, 2020April 24, 2020 by Mike

Nope.

Yesterday we published two seemingly unrelated news articles. Yet the story they tell when placed next to each other and viewed in the same gaze with clear eyes is one every American should hear and ponder.

First, we reported on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The darling of the “just left of Marx” camp, in an interview with Vice, stated that once the economic lockdowns are lifted, Americans should simply refuse to go back to work. Here’s what she said:

“When we have this discussion about ‘going back’ or ‘reopening,’ I think a lot of people should just say, ‘No. We’re not going back to that. We’re not going back to 70 hour weeks just so we could put food on the table and not even feel any semblance of security in our lives.'”

Americans should refuse to go back to work, she says. “No. We’re not going back to that,” we should say.

Back to what? To the greatest and most prosperous economic times humans have ever known. The highest wages and the lowest unemployment for all groups. Companies fighting each other to pay people more for their skills and services. The least amount of financial suffering of our lifetimes. An economic situation that should have caused any of us with a modicum of self-awareness, knowledge of history, and honor to say out loud every day, “Thank you, God, for this time in which I live.”+

That’s what AOC says we should refuse to go back to. The best we’ve ever had it. Because it wasn’t enough. The government should be giving us more, more, more — without us having to lift a finger. We deserve it. We are entitled to it.

That’s one way of being an American.

No, that’s one way of being UN-American, however gratingly Sandy from Westchester might protest otherwise.

Next, we reported on factory workers at a company called Braskem America in Pennsylvania. More than 40 employees made the collective decision in March to leave their families and live at the factory for 28 days, where they would eat, sleep, and take turns working 12-hour shifts to produce protective equipment for healthcare workers fighting the coronavirus pandemic. They clocked out yesterday after their month-long shift.

I couldn’t help but notice that every one of these workers appears to be male (extremely problematic lack of gender equity!). And may I hazard a guess that most of these men were raised to be men.

They lived in a factory. For a month. Doing factory work in 12-hour shifts. They agreed on it unanimously.

I wonder, did they each have an in-depth consultation with a union rep first? Did they demand quadruple-time “hazard pay”? Did they insist on more benefits, more accommodations, some equity, shorter work-weeks, and an extra paid month off next year as a “human right”? Did they require that the owner of the factory reduce his income a certain percentage before they’d do the work?

I don’t know these men, but I have a hunch that instead of all that, what they said was something like, “Alright, boys. We can help a lot of people and get some sweet overtime in the process. Let’s man up and take care of business.”

That’s another way of being an American.

In truth, theirs is the ONLY way. Or the only RIGHT way, at least. Whatever Juggs McMouthbreather might or might not believe herself to be, every peurile syllable out of her mouth proclaims that she has no concept whatever of what it means to be a real American, and likely never will.

(Via Insty)

The American Uprising gathers steam

Posted on April 24, 2020April 25, 2020 by Mike

Fight the Power.

CASTLE ROCK—Sedalia knife shop owner Hal Van Herke on Tuesday posted a Declaration of Business Independence on Facebook saying he would reopen CastleGate Knife and Tool Tuesday in defiance of Governor Polis’ stay-at-home order.

Van Herke’s declaration says in part:

“WHEREAS: Small businesses have carried the burden of this effort more heavily than special interests, large corporations and major banks who once again received preferential treatment and largess from the Federal Government at the further cost of small business tax payers, and

WHEREAS: Non-essential Government, Academic, and Corporate staff continue to remain unconscionably fully paid at the same time that Small Business, the Self Employed and the Unemployed suffer, and

WHEREAS: Our attempts at petition and righteous redress, to Our Government has fallen on uncaring ears, and in some cases has been actively suppressed, and

WHEREAS: We refuse to become second-class citizens, beholden to the entitled class for our safety, freedom, and wellbeing, and

WHEREAS: We have the ability to operate our business in such a manner as to reduce and mitigate the risk to our Community, Customers, and Staff, and to adjust operations in a responsible and balanced manner commensurate with local conditions.”

“I felt like it was important to for somebody to stand up along with other businesses and say we’re not going to be discounted in this and we’re not going to sit back and watch our life’s work destroyed while many of the people making decisions are still being paid their full time salary while they’re sitting at home,” said Van Herke.

Amen to that, brother.

In his declaration, Van Herke quotes President Ronald Reagan’s farewell address of January 11, 1989 in which Reagan says, “I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”

Amen to that, too. Ain’t it sad how quickly, and how thoroughly, Americans seem to have forgotten that home truth.

(Via Stephen Green)

Update! Defiance: the American spirit.

Shelly Luther, a salon owner in Dallas, is drawing a line in the sand. Behind on her mortgage and no Small Business Association funding in sight, Luther has decided to re-open her business Friday, April 24, in violation of the stay-at-home order in Texas that has closed all non-essential businesses, Inside Edition reported.

“I’m behind on my mortgage,” Luther said. “I know a lot of my stylists haven’t paid their mortgage. It’s either come in and make money to be able to feed your family or stay home and freak out.”

A mother of three, Luther has 19 stylists who make their living at her salon.

“Obviously I don’t want anyone to get sick and I don’t want the virus to spread,” the business owner told Inside Edition. “It will be one of the safer places for people to go rather than going to Walmart or Home Depot.”

And Luther is willing to risk her freedom as an American.

“No one wants to go to jail, but if push comes to shove I’m willing to take that risk,” she said.

Which is the question podcast host Cari Kelemen asked in a tweet.

Noting that Luther’s schedule was “PACKED,” Kelemen asked how local authorities would respond to this carefully calculated violation.

“This morning, a single mom Salon Owner in Dallas, who cannot afford to stay closed another day, is opening her salon ‘ahead of schedule.’ Her schedule today is PACKED with happy women. Will sheriffs be there to arrest her? How will the women with appointments respond if they do?”

That really is the crucial question here, isn’t it? For their own part, the cops ought to know that enforcing illegal edicts carries a price tag of its own.

In my previous column, posted on April 6, I lamented that the actions of some police officers, ordered to carry out some of the sillier or more onerous restrictions attendant to the pandemic, will further erode the already strained relationships their departments have within their communities. As one might have predicted, things have only gotten worse. Since that column was posted, we have seen police officers issuing $500 citations for the crime of attending a drive-in church service, and others arresting an Idaho woman who dared take her kids to a closed playground. Indeed, social media is awash with similar tales, which are all the more insulting to the average citizen when accompanied by stories of criminals released from jail only to re-offend within hours.

With the accumulation of these stories, the populace grows ever more restive at the restraints placed upon them. If the law and civil authority are to be respected, the laws must be respectable, at least to a majority of those on whom they are imposed.

Which brings us back to the police officers in the field and caught between their feckless superiors and a fractious public. There comes a time in every cop’s career when he receives instructions he knows will waste his time and may even be antithetical to his mission to reduce the fear of crime in his community. Often these instructions are relayed by a sergeant who himself is equally dubious about them, but who is obeying orders to disseminate them. When this happens, it is the wise officer who can say, “Yes, sir,” and then go out and do the right thing, modifying the instructions or ignoring them altogether with the sergeant’s tacit blessing. Every good cop, and every good sergeant, is familiar and comfortable with this arrangement.

Chasing people away from churches, beaches, hiking trails, and parks, and arresting those who do not meekly comply, is not enforcing the “law,” it is enforcing the whimsical edicts of people unqualified to craft and issue them. When all of this is over, can the damage be undone?

Doubtful at best, and certainly not easily. Look at it this way: when a trust is betrayed, how willing should the betrayed be to grant it again, at least without a great deal of hesitance and skepticism? Does that sound like a smart move, or a sucker’s bet?

Non-essential update! I didn’t think of this angle before, and I really should have.

Whenever the threat of a government shutdown looms, Democrats and their media allies give us daily doses of how devastating such a thing will be on “non-essential” government workers.

Then they go into overdrive when a shutdown actually occurs: wall-to-wall sob stories giving examples of government workers supposedly harmed even though, everyone knows, those employees will soon be paid. They essentially have a paid vacation.

Now, after weeks of the intentional destruction of the private sector with tens of millions of jobs lost, with businesses and families being devastated and having no idea how they will feed their families and themselves, there are few of those same sob stories, despite real hardship, and here is what we get instead:

If a Republican governor wants to open a state’s businesses, we get attack pieces saying he wants people to die. It’s as if the media were acting as a major participant in encouraging the U.S. to commit economic suicide. For decades, they have sought to weaken the U.S. and remake America.

If most of the media had an honest bone in their bodies, instead of an agenda, they would report that states that did not have a complete shutdown, or stay-at-home orders, had as good results or better results than states that put in the tyrannical, dictatorial orders. They would say there is no proof that the stay-at-home orders and harsh measures caused the flattening of the COVID-19 curve. It appears that most of the flattening has occurred naturally, same as with the normal flu.

That’s a pretty big “if” there, fella. Probably the biggest, most glaring one ever attempted indoors.

A sane Democrat (no, really!) breaks ranks

Posted on April 24, 2020April 24, 2020 by Mike

Good on ya, Congressman, and welcome aboard.

Georgia Democrat Vernon Jones said Thursday that the way his party has treated him since he endorsed President Donald Trump is proof that “they are the bigots they claim to hate.”

“The way the Democrat Party has treated me this past week has made one thing clear: they are the bigots they claim to hate and I won’t be silent about it,” Jones tweeted along with a video of local news coverage of his resignation from the state House.

Jones received immediate backlash from within his own party after he announced his support for Trump, saying that the president had done great things for the black community.

“I’m a Georgia State Representative and lifelong Democrat. But in this election, I’ll be casting my vote for @realdonaldtrump,” Jones tweeted just last week, adding, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The Party left me.”

He threw in a Reagan quote too? No wonder the plantation overseers flipped out with rage on him.

“I’m sick and tired of me and my family being attacked and harassed by the Democrat Party for putting my country before my party,” Jones said in a statement released Wednesday and first obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

After the usual Democrat-Socialist shitfling over his sudden lapse into reason and rationality, Jones announced his intention to resign from office. Happily, he thought it over and decided to stick another thumb into their eye instead.

State Rep. Vernon Jones backtracked Thursday on plans to resign from his General Assembly seat, a day after announcing he would step down in the wake of fierce criticism for his endorsement of President Donald Trump’s reelection bid.

Jones, D-Lithonia, said on Twitter he decided to reverse course after receiving “overwhelming support and outcry” following his resignation decision Wednesday morning.

“That was emotional and that was motivational,” Vernon said, shortly before noting he will remain in the primary to hold his state House seat.

“Turn the lights off, I have left the plantation,” Jones said in a statement announcing his resignation Wednesday. “Someone else can occupy that suite.”

Again: good on ya, sir.

In recent comments, Jones criticized the Democratic Party as a stifling influence on conservative black Americans. He also hailed Trump’s economic record, his support for historic black colleges and universities, and for signing legislation to release low-level federal prisoners.

Jones has also lashed out against Democratic lawmakers for their stances on immigration, noting he prefers the crackdown approach Trump takes on illegal border crossings.

In a radio interview Wednesday morning, Jones said he plans to remain a Democrat despite the fact his statements of late have met with intense criticism from Georgia Democratic leaders.

“What are they going to do, spank me?” Jones said on The Rashad Richey Morning Show. “I don’t care what the Democratic Party is going to do.”

Nor should you. Nor should anybody, really.

Smoke ’em if ya got ’em

Posted on April 24, 2020April 24, 2020 by Mike

Man, I’ve been waiting a long, long time for something like this.

French researchers are planning to trial whether nicotine patches will help prevent – or lessen the effects of – the deadly coronavirus.

Evidence is beginning to show the proportion of smokers infected with coronavirus is much lower than the rates in the general population.

Scientists are now questioning whether nicotine could stop the virus from infecting cells, or if it may prevent the immune system overreacting to the infection.

Doctors at a major hospital in Paris – who also found low rates of smoking among the infected – are now planning to give nicotine patches to COVID-19 patients.

They will also give them to frontline workers to see if the stimulant has any effect on preventing the spread of the virus, according to reports.

It comes after world-famous artist David Hockney last week said he believes smoking could protect people against the deadly coronavirus.

MailOnline looked at the science and found he may have been onto something, with one researcher saying there was ‘bizarrely strong’ evidence it could be true.

One study in China, where the pandemic began, showed only 6.5 per cent of COVID-19 patients were smokers, compared to 26.6 per cent of the population.

Another study, by the Centers for Disease Control in the US, found just 1.3 per cent of hospitalised patients were smokers – compared to 14 per cent of America.

And research by hospitals in Paris found that smokers were under-represented in both inpatients and outpatients, suggesting that any protective effect could affect anyone, not just those hospitalised by their illness.

‘Our cross-sectional study strongly suggests that those who smoke every day are much less likely to develop a symptomatic or severe infection with Sars-CoV-2 compared with the general population,’ the study reads.

‘The effect is significant. It divides the risk by five for ambulatory patients and by four for those admitted to hospital. We rarely see this in medicine.’

The team says it is not advocating that anyone start smoking because cigarettes have fatal health risks.

Well, naturally not. But why take any chances?

Another factor here in the States might be that we smokers have been “social distancing” for years now, if not by our own choice. As pariahs, societal lepers despised and cast out to slink away, in all kinds of weather, to our ever-shrinking “Smoking zone” ghettos, we’ve long been accustomed to decent folks keeping themselves far out of the way of our filth, our stench, all the revolting physical infirmities and deformations caused by our weak, sinful natures. Our exile has turned out to be a shield.

So not only has smoking, by being that which has not (yet) killed us, possibly made us stronger somehow, it also seems God has seen fit to bless smokers with some sort of mysterious Wuhan Woo Woo-inhibiting genetic quirk carried by our precious nicotine. O, Irony!

Hey, I’ll take it.

Let a million middle fingers rise

Posted on April 21, 2020April 23, 2020 by Mike

The spirit of American rebellion still lives, and is beginning to awaken at last.

Clearly, the greatest public- heath threat imaginable…a kid on a skateboard. Young people, remember, this is what Big-government statist Democrats do—they take away your freedom. https://t.co/VBCmnZRvfC

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) April 19, 2020

Now get a load of what happened next. Trust me, it’ll warm the cockles of even the most cynical heart.

It may not seem like all that much…yet. But it will be small, seemingly insignificant acts of defiance like this that will snowball into full-on revolt—which is something America has never in its history needed more desperately than it does right now.

Update! Washington state insurrection.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s draconian executive orders mandating business closures and stay-at-home status for all residents has been rejected by county commissioners in Franklin County. The motion passed unanimously. Now, the legal battles may or may not begin but in the immediate future, the county is official reopened for business.

“I move that Franklin County end recognition of the governor’s stay at home emergency proclamation that is now deemed unconstitutional. We support the reopening for all builders and small businesses that want to work,” Commissioner Clint Didier said during a meeting Tuesday morning.

This opens the door for other counties and cities to oppose the order based on RCW 43.06.220(4), which limits the governor’s state-of-emergency powers to 30 days unless the state legislature passes an extension.

Well, I gotta admit I didn’t see THAT coming.

Payback time update! Cockroaches get hit with a spotlight, to their great dismay.

Talk radio great Jamie Allman filed a Sunshine law request for the actual emails of St. Louis County residents who’ve snitched on local entrepreneurs trying to make a living. Most of the complaints were unfounded, involving people “turning in” companies that were deemed essential by the county.

But reading the actual complaints reveals just how terrified the media and corrupt academics have made good people. The complainants are truly scared. They believe that Coronavirus kills almost everyone who gets infected. They believe that washing your car, hitting golf balls at a range, or playing singles tennis can spread the disease to many people.

The 900-page file of complaints is, ultimately, sad. What could be more depressing than a mother begging government officials to put her daughter out of work? Or women asking the county to shut down their fiancé’s company?

Well, about the only thing I can think of is the thought of such despicable, craven panic-ninnies getting away with diming out friends and loved ones without paying a stiff price for such perfidy. Doxx the living fuck out of every last one of these diaper-dragging ratbags; if the old “snitches get stitches” bylaw can’t be practically enforced, then public exposure, scorn, and humiliation is the very least they have coming to ’em.

So how’s THAT working out for ya, Bill?

Posted on April 21, 2020April 21, 2020 by Mike

When His (dis)Honor Red Bill DeBalledZero gets a bucketful of dung hurled in his face by constituents repurposing his New York Narc Line for the better, you know there’s still hope for America.

De Blasio’s social distancing tip line flooded with penis photos, Hitler memes
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s critics let him know how they really felt about him ordering New Yorkers to snitch on each other for violating social-distancing rules — by flooding his new tip line with crank complaints including “dick pics” and people flipping the bird, The Post has learned.

Photos of extended middle fingers, the mayor dropping the Staten Island groundhog and news coverage of him going to the gym have all been texted to a special tip line that de Blasio announced Saturday, according to screenshots posted on Twitter.

One user sent the message “We will fight this tyrannical overreach!” to the service and got an automated message that in part said, “Hello, and thank you for texting NYC311.”

“F–k you!” replied @MorganLSchmidt1, along with a meme showing Adolf Hitler and the words “TO THOSE TURNING IN YOUR NEIGHBORS AND LOCAL BUSINESSES — YOU DID THE REICH THING.”

“Start flooding their reporting text numbers with this pics!” the tweet added.

Other profane messages included a photo of a bowl of gummy candies in the shape of male genitalia and a sign saying “EAT A BAG OF D–KS.”

All good stuff, yes, but this next one is probably my own personal fave.

An NYPD source said that “dick pic” photos of real penises have also been texted to 311, and a caller phoned in a tip that de Blasio was seen performing oral sex on someone “in an alleyway behind a 7-11” early Sunday.

YES. More like that one, please. Remember to include a detailed description of the burro Bill was observed blowing with your report next time, too. Thank you.

The inundation of off-color texts was so large the city had to temporarily shut down the service.

“The city has begun vetting everything before dispersing the information to precincts,” the NYPD source said.

And then, after you guys get done with all those, umm, essential services, maybe youse could get back to work doing some actual police work.

Sounds crazy, I know, but it just might work.

At last, the silver lining!

Posted on April 20, 2020April 20, 2020 by Mike

Hey, you never let a serious crisis go to waste. Right, libtards?

President Trump announced on Twitter Monday night he will be signing an executive order temporarily suspending immigration to the United States due to the COVID-19 Chinese coronavirus and the need to protect jobs for Americans.

“In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!”

Ironic, innit, that while governors and local-yokel officials are busy trampling the Constitution underfoot to glom all the power they can for themselves, Trump The Evil Dictator is taking direct, common-sense action to protect the interests of working-stiff Americans whose livelihoods have been at best jeopardized by those same governors and local-yokels?

Are we not men?

Posted on April 17, 2020April 18, 2020 by Mike

On your feet or on your knees.

I am thoroughly disheartened – nay, sickened — by the sheeplike behavior of so many of our countrymen. I cannot believe they think the proper response to “our leaders’” overweening usurpations of authorities never granted is to politely ask for their rights back.

Americans don’t do that. Americans exercise their rights openly and confidently. They don’t ask for anyone’s permission.

Your rights are not permissions. They are yours, not because some “authority” has granted them to you, but by virtue of your membership in the human race. To treat them as permissions is to surrender them, such that any “crisis,” whether real or notional, can be used to nullify them. And there are plenty of wannabe dictators who are grasping at that opportunity — with the support of the left-wing media…

It hardly matters what rights you claim if you refrain from exercising them. That’s how the Second Amendment was gutted. It’s how the rest of the Bill of Rights is being reduced to meaninglessness. And if we permit it to go one millimeter further, we are unworthy of the term “free people.”

It’s not about the economy. It’s not about the virus. It’s not about “science.” It’s about freedom: holding onto the pitiful amount we have left after two and a quarter centuries’ incursions upon it, usually in the name of “crisis” or “safety.”

Free men accept that life entails risk.
They don’t ask their “leaders” to “protect” them.
When “leaders” tyrannize them “for your own good,” they rise up.
Such “leaders” become lamppost decorations, pour encourager les autres.

Are you a free man or a sheep?

From what we’re seeing of late, the answer to that question is far from encouraging. Happily, though, sometimes it doesn’t take all that much in the way of pushback or defiance to force our masters to relent:

Full dressed #Navy Master Chief standing in the water today on Emerald Isle NC after the beach & water were closed. LEO let him go and approx 3 hours later the town of Emerald Isle opened back up the beach & water to the public!#AmericanHero #salute4servinghumanity #MAGA pic.twitter.com/3fIaOjNgGF

— John B Wells 11:11 (@JohnBWellsCTM) April 17, 2020

Good on ya, Master Chief. They may well take us down in the long run, but at the very least we can make ’em work for it.

Update! This may seem to be unrelated, but it strikes me as yet another depressing aspect of the Great Knuckling Under.

Land O’ Lakes drops ‘racist’ Native American image after nearly 100 years
The new label was announced in a press release from Land O’ Lakes in February, though it made no specific mention of removing the Native American image from all products.

The press release shared “the new packaging will show up in a variety of ways, including through a new front-of-package design that features the phrase ‘Farmer-Owned’ above the LAND O LAKES brandmark,” as well as include pictures of farmers and co-op members on the label.

“As Land O’Lakes looks toward our 100th anniversary, we’ve recognized we need packaging that reflects the foundation and heart of our company culture—and nothing does that better than our farmer-owners whose milk is used to produce Land O’Lakes’ dairy products,” said Beth Ford, President and CEO, Land O’Lakes, in the press release.

“As a farmer-owned co-op, we strongly feel the need to better connect the men and women who grow our food with those who consume it,” Ford said.

Is it really necessary to “connect” them beyond having them buy and eat your damned butter? Because if it is, I’m just damned if I can see the why of it. Or how a bunch of mealy-mouthed gobbledygook from some college-kid corporate flack who probably never yanked a single bovine teat in her life is gonna get the job done. Until such time as you can explain those mysterious profundities to me, grab that plunger-handle and get to churning, lady.

But if you think that’s depressing stuff—and it is—wait till you get a load of the backstory.

Did you know that back in the 1950s, when Land O’ Lakes wanted to update their logo, they hired an American Indian artist to do the job. He came up with Mia, the logo we’re all familiar with, to honor American Indian culture and their traditional connection to nature.

I checked into it a little myself, and WeirdDave ain’t just making it up.

Mia first appeared on Land O’Lakes packaging in 1928, and was originally designed by illustrator Arthur C. Hanson for the advertising firm Brown and Bigelow.

Native American artist Patrick DesJarlait, of the Ojibwe tribe, redesigned the packaging in the 1950s to foster “a sense of Indian pride,” the Minnesota Reformer reported.

His son, Robert DesJarlait, told the outlet that the image — which has been slammed by many as “racist” — has become a “paradox” for Native Americans.

“He was breaking a lot of barriers…Back in the ’50s, nobody even thought about stereotypical imagery. Today it’s a stereotype, but it’s also a source of cultural pride,” DesJarlait told the outlet.

As well it might be, too. As Dave says, you can be pretty confident that there were few if any Native Americans among the SJW screechers demanding Land-O-Lakes’ capitulation to mindless PC here.

Puzzling, innit, the way those screechers have managed to “fundamentally transform” a legitimate source of cultural pride into some kind of shameful offense against all human decency. In the end, though, this isn’t really about butter, or marketing, or the Land-O-Lakes mascot, or respect for Indians and their heritage, or even “racism” itself. In the end, it’s really about this:

Regardless of how many times they say it, the far left can't come up with a definition of "systemic racism" that doesn't involve collapsing American society, our system of government and our rights. When she says she wants to "dismantle racist institutions"– she means America. https://t.co/Y3LxoYK6xx

— Dalia al-Aqidi (@Dalia4Congress) April 16, 2020

So is the above gutting of Ilhan Omar-Elmi really related to the topic at hand? You just better believe it is, chum. Because collapsing American society, dismantling America, is ALWAYS what it’s about with the Left—every single time, every single issue, every single word of every single argument. Until you begin to get your head fully around that, you ain’t fighting back, and you damned sure ain’t winning. You’re just chasing your tail, that’s all.

It’s five o’clock somewhere

Posted on April 17, 2020April 17, 2020 by Mike

After the bleak despair of the previous post, how’s about something a little more uplifting, eh?

Some states are declaring what businesses are “essential” and “non-essential.”

Many states, at least, are putting liquor and beer/wine stores in that “essential” category (it’s a pandemic, people, and alcohol has been proven to help*).

But getting out to the store is not easy for everyone — especially for the most vulnerable Americans.

Take Olive Veronesi. She’s 93 years old and lives outside Pittsburgh. She ran out of beer during the coronavirus lockdown and, being in a vulnerable age group for coronavirus, couldn’t leave to get more.

So she made a little sign and held it up in front of her window, holding a Coors Light can. “I need more beer!!” she said from her home in Seminole, news station KDKA reported.

People have sent in comments from all over the world. “Love you to bits all the way from England,” Martin Goodwin wrote. “Oh okay a 93-year-old does it and it’s funny and heartwarming but when I do it I’m an alcoholic,” Ty Mason wrote.

And in this day and age, heroes come in all sorts. Coors stepped up to the task and pledged to help out Veronesi. “Olive asked, and beer is on its way,” Coors Light tweeted Sunday night.

Hey, if Granny wants a beer, she by God oughta have herself one.

Uncle Gropey’s sad deterioration

Posted on April 17, 2020April 18, 2020 by Mike

Okay, okay, if it were anybody other than Uncle Gropey it would be sad, and I’d feel at least some pity for the poor old coot. But in light of how long Bribe’em been a corrupt, despicable, third-rate con artist, it’s howlingly funny. And he richly deserves every last bit of scorn and contempt that can be heaped upon his rapidly-emptying head.

In a remote interview earlier today on MSNBC, Democratic presidential nominee-apparent Joe Biden had a sad anecdote to tell about the impact of the Wuhan-virus pandemic on one American dad.

I’m pretty sure, anyway.

In case you don’t have all day to make sense of Biden’s story, I made the effort to transcribe it for you. It was a time-consuming process, but I’ve done my best to make it error-free. Still, any mistakes in the transcription are my own. Lapses of logic, coherence, cogency, grammar, and the like all belong to Biden.

One last thing before you read on. Biden was making odd slurping noises during his appearance, and while I can’t explain them, I did include them in the transcript for the sake of completeness.

Here you go:

I sat with a guy on, on a telephone and he’s telling me, he said, “I don’t always,” he said, “Look, I, I, I, I, I, I’m, I, I worked at the hospital.” And he said, “Then I, I got, I got myself a position where I got the virus so they quarantined me and, and they put me in the hospital, and I made it out and so I’m out [slurp]. But they don’t want me with my family. I’m on the third floor. I spent 15 minutes on the phone with them saying,’ he said, ‘I have a three-year-old and a four-year-old. They come to the door outside and they just knock on the door and say ‘Daddy, Daddy, can I see you Daddy, can I see you Daddy?’’”

So we spent time going through it [slurp], I used to do with my kids when they were little and I couldn’t see them and we’d play games. I said, “Knock, make up a game, knock, knock on the door and say this is, you know [slurp].” [incomprehensible] This is practical things, the guy’s scared to death. And he’s worried about his children, he’s worried about his wie [sic]. I mean, these are practical things. And the president talks about this like, “OK, it’s gonna be OK. We’re gonna open… tomorrow. We’re gonna do this.”

I mean, it just, I must tell you, it drives me crazy. I don’t know what he doesn’t understand.

It’s a real head-scratcher what Biden doesn’t know, does know, or is trying to say — if anything.

When most politicians speak, audiences have to suspend their disbelief. When it’s Biden speaking they have to suspend their incomprehension.

And their intellect, facility for logic, and integrity, too.

O Brave New World, that has such fascists in it!

Posted on April 17, 2020April 17, 2020 by Mike

Some folks are shocked and/or angry about CooCooCoomo’s pronouncement, but I think he’s more right than wrong here. Although probably for the worst possible reasons.

(CNSNews.com) – New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo predicted “a new normal” when the state’s economy reopens – in the environment, economics, civil rights, and social justice.

“People are restless. We have to talk about the reopening of the economy. How do we do this? We have to build a bridge, from where we are to the reopening of the economy. Well, what does that look like?” he said during a press conference on Wednesday.

“Let’s say that where we’re going it’s not a reopening, in that we are going to reopen what was. We are going to a different place, and we should go to a different place, and we should go to a better place. If we don’t learn the lessons from this situation, that all of this will have been in vain,” Cuomo said.

“So we’re going to a different place, which is a new normal. We talk about the new normal. We’ve been talking about the new normal for years. We are going to have a new normal in public health. By the way, the way we have a new normal in an environment, the new normal in economics, a new normal in civil rights, a new normal and social justice, right? This is the way of the world now,” he said.

We are indeed going to find ourselves saddled with a “new normal” from here on out, pretty much no matter what anybody does. But it isn’t going to be a nice, happy place. Coomo’s statement, though, is one among several that puts the lie to recent Righty crowing about how the coronavirus panic has singlehandedly discredited so many cherished liberal tropes—globalism; densely-packed urban areas over surburbia; mass transit instead of private autos; open borders and unrestricted immigration; the desirability of big, intrusive government, etc—for good, thereby rendering them, shall we say, unsustainable.

Somebody should maybe tell the Left that, though, because from where I sit it sure looks like they fully intend to double down, rather than shamefacedly admitting the error of the Leftist Way and slinking off the national stage to rethink a few things, and current reality be damned. Interestingly enough, it seems some Leftard states are already making bold moves towards this New Normal.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced the Northeastern Directorate will keep all citizens within the region on lock-down through May 15, 2020, with a possible extension depending on an agreement within the Blue State alliance members.

Six other governors from within the Northeastern Directorate form the regional alliance.

Northeast states: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Delaware have assembled an authoritarian alliance, without legislative approval and without legal precedent, to block any federal efforts to reopen the economy.

The Blue State leaders have determined it is in the best interests of the Northeastern citizenry for individual rights to be suspended under a post-constitutional framework. The government in this region will determine when the advancement of individual rights will be permitted and will set the parameters of permitted civic, social and economic engagement.

All citizens within the Northeastern Directorate are now captive to arbitrary rules on business ownership, property rights, contract terms, movement and assembly. Under the terms of a regional health emergency, as outlined by the command and control structure, currently citizens within the containment area are quarantined and not permitted to exit their homes, petition government or request redress for grievances.

But the Northeastern Directorate isn’t the only region to kinda-sorta declare its independence from the former Republic:

(Bloomberg Opinion) — California this week declared its independence from the federal government’s feeble efforts to fight Covid-19 — and perhaps from a bit more. The consequences for the fight against the pandemic are almost certainly positive. The implications for the brewing civil war between Trumpism and America’s budding 21st-century majority, embodied by California’s multiracial liberal electorate, are less clear.

Speaking on MSNBC, Governor Gavin Newsom said that he would use the bulk purchasing power of California “as a nation-state” to acquire the hospital supplies that the federal government has failed to provide. If all goes according to plan, Newsom said, California might even “export some of those supplies to states in need.”

“Nation-state.” “Export.”

Hey, fine by me, and don’t let the door etc. Feel free to take some of the other Democrat-Socialist shitholes like, say, Chicago, Portland, and Seattle along with ya when you go, too. We ask not your counsels or your arms. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

Fish in a barrel

Posted on April 14, 2020April 14, 2020 by Mike

Another day, another sick burn.

Trump defended his response today to the coronavirus in order to fight negative reporting from the ‘Fake News Media’ in two different ways.

First, he layed out the timeline of his response…

And then:

President Trump just played a montage of the the media downplaying the Coronavirus in the White House Briefing Room

What a Savage ? pic.twitter.com/rZDio8F27V

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) April 13, 2020

It sometimes seems as if they’re actually trying to make it easy for him to kick their asses up between their shoulder blades, don’t it?

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